Friday, September 13, 2013

On Uprooting ObamaCare Right Away

I’m sure someone else has pointed this out, but there’s a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the right’s anti-Obamacare strategy...

...as Jonathan Cohn points out, inside the right-wing bubble it’s taken as gospel that Obamacare will be an utter, obvious disaster...But if the right really believed this, it should be happy to let Obamacare come into existence, then collapse.

Really? Just let a horrible idea come into existence, so that it can collapse to prove you right?Sorry, but that's as bad an idea as ObamaCare is, and I'll explain why below.But before doing so, I'd like to point out that in no way am I taking the side of "the right" here. Republicans are a complete disaster, and I have no confidence in them bringing about ObamaCare's demise.If, by some chance, ObamaCare does fall apart, it'll probably be despite the Republicans, not because of them. Republicans would only replace ObamaCare with their own crony concoction anyway. So the argument must be separated from that slimy party.The battle in healthcare (and everywhere else in the economy) is between the free market and government intervention. In other words, it's the free market vs. both Democrats & Republicans.Now back to Dr. Nobel Prize...The U.S. has already allowed many bad ideas to take root. I'll focus on just two. First, the establishment of The Federal Reserve, and second the creation of the military empire.In both cases, the bad ideas were able to dig their roots in deep, and we're now left with nothing but waiting for them to collapse. The Fed has made it to 100 years, and the Military Empire can be traced back to the Spanish/American War in 1898. Or if we're really nitpicking, when Lincoln's North invaded the South. In any case, both ideas of Empire & Central Banking began roughly at the same time. This is no coincidence, since The Fed finances The Empire. The former is the beating heart of the latter.Was it a good idea for our American ancestors to let these monsters take root?Not if you had the ability to ask the millions (both foreign and domestic individuals) that are dead! It would have been in their interest for the hard money camp and the non-interventionists to have won back in 1913.What about the millions of individuals that have been financially ruined because of the Fed's business cycles. What about everyone that continues to hold and transact in dollars? These victims have the Fed pickpocket their purchasing power, creating unmeasurable heartache. All done while Krugman chants that they don't pickpocket enough! How many divorces have these policies brought about? How many suicides?Was it a good idea that Keynes got his way, just so it could all collapse someday, to prove Mises and Hayek right?It probably depends on which side of the line of power you stand on.Krugman says:

In fact, politically the right is acting as if it fears that Obamacare will, in reality, be highly popular — that once the exchanges and the Medicare expansion go into effect, people will decide that they like the new system, and strongly oppose efforts to reverse course.

Of course some people will like it! You know who likes The Fed? ....Wall Street, Crony Corporate America, politicians who can buy votes and welfare recipients, and the armies of government employees. You can also include the likes of Lockheed, Boeing, and Booz Allen, who love The Fed and the Military Empire.Of course there are going to be winners in the ObamaCare scheme. There's no denying that the Crony Pharma establishment is licking its chops.But this all comes at the expense of everyone else.The free market, on the other hand, equals mutual benefit. Both parties in a trade believe they are better off after making it than not. They also value what they are gaining more than what they are giving up.Our ancestors missed out on squashing The Fed & The Empire when they had the chance. Everyone since (up to and including us) are now paying an unbelievable price. We're forced to wait until both of them bang up against economic law, which never fails in eradicating horrible ideas.The wait is not easy, and the economic pain keeps getting dialed up one notch at a time.Best to ged rid of ObamaCare right now.To paraphrase the great Leonard Read, if there were a button available to push, that would make ObamaCare disappear right this second, the correct thing to do would be to push that button!

Harry Reid and Tom Coburn Agree: Obamacare Was Designed to Fail, Pave Way for Single-Payerhttp://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/harry-reid-and-tom-coburn-agree-obamacare-was-designed-fail-pave-way-single-payer_745908.html